Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack 6 Previews TripleO

The new release of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack platform includes OpenStack-on-OpenStack (TripleO), which will let clouds deploy and build other clouds.

Red Hat Feb. 17 announced the general availability of release 6.0 of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform (OSP), providing an enterprise-grade cloud platform based on the OpenStack Juno milestone release. Red Hat is also going a step beyond what was in the OpenStack Juno release by providing its users with a technology preview of the TripleO OpenStack-on-OpenStack project.

Red Hat is one of the leading code contributors to the open-source OpenStack cloud platform, and has both a community distribution called RDO and an enterprise-supported release with OSP that it makes available to users. RDO, much like Red Hat's community Fedora project, closely tracks and follows the upstream open-source community, while OSP is a more stable release that benefits from additional enterprise hardening. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 6.0 release follows the upstream OpenStack Juno release, which debuted on Oct. 16, 2014.

Among the big enhancements in the OpenStack Juno release is the inclusion of the Sahara data processing project that enables Hadoop big data workloads to run in an OpenStack cloud. Sahara is fully supported in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 6.0 release, according to Mark McLoughlin, OpenStack technical director at Red Hat.

Looking beyond Sahara, McLoughlin noted that Red Hat has been investing heavily in the TripleO project and is including it as a technology preview in OSP 6.

"I think there is something really interesting and new happening with TripleO," McLoughlin told eWEEK.

The basic idea behind TripleO is that the system uses OpenStack to deploy OpenStack. TripleO also considers the challenges of provisioning and large-scale image management. In the technology preview, Red Hat has tried to provide a comfortable user experience and deployment API for TripleO, McLoughlin said.

Rather than use a user interface application to install OpenStack, with TripleO the user is presented with what looks like a cloud that models bare metal infrastructure, storage and networking, he said. Through the system, the user deploys OpenStack, leveraging all the richness of an OpenStack cloud to deploy another OpenStack cloud.

McLoughlin added that the Red Hat technology preview for TripleO differs a bit from the upstream project in that it uses Red Hat Package Manager (RPM)-based packages, rather than just pulling from a Git code repository.

Using OpenStack to deploy OpenStack with TripleO opens up a whole new way in which vendors such as Red Hat will be able to manage and provision OpenStack clouds to customers.

"There are many OpenStack installation tools out there. The whole point of TripleO is to think beyond installation—to think about the long-term maintenance, management, monitoring and upgrading of the cloud," McLoughlin said. "TripleO provides a holistic take on cloud management."

As TripleO matures, the plan is to integrate it with the Red Hat Satellite platform, which provides life cycle management for Red Hat customers. This would enable Red Hat customers to manage provisioning and support subscriptions as well. Looking forward, McLoughlin said there is also likely to be integration in Red Hat's portfolio between TripleO and the Red Hat CloudForms hybrid cloud management product.

As a technology preview, Red Hat expects that its users will use TripleO in pilot deployments.

"The official stance is that TripleO is not recommended for production, but at the same time we really work closely with customers that want to try out new functionality, and we'll do everything we can to help them be successful with it," McLoughlin said.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.

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